


Still Watching, Still Breathing

by overthemoon



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post Reichenbach
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-04
Updated: 2013-05-04
Packaged: 2017-12-10 08:56:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 637
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/784209
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/overthemoon/pseuds/overthemoon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John can see it in her unblinking eyes, her disbelief, as she nods at him.</p><p>John can’t stop imagining the turned up collar of a pale man with eyes like scopes on a sniper gun; the image burns bright every time John tries to sleep at night, closed eyes guarding against the dark.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Watching, Still Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> [Based on this gifset.](http://arkenstoners.tumblr.com/post/44708552663)  
>  Thank you to Nichellen for the retro-beta and britpick! Pavements. Not Sidewalk.

John breathes out. Ella’s office smells like unreplaced air freshener. (John hates that smell; it feels like the air inside doesn’t know how to wake up and live.)

“I just know it was him,” he confesses. 

John swallows and touches his fingers to his bitten, peeling lips. He licks them, nervous. John can see it in her unblinking eyes, her disbelief, as she nods at him. (So calm, too calm.) There’s no need to explain who “him” is, not when Ella’s had to put up with months of John non-stop blogging about his pet madman. John can’t stop imagining the turned up collar of a pale man with eyes like scopes on a sniper gun; the image burns bright every time John tries to sleep at night, closed eyes guarding against the dark. (It’s not a nightmare though, and he’s grateful for that.)

John looks away from Ella’s too-calm face at the dead plastic plants in the sensible, plastic vase behind her. Everything in this office is dead except for Ella and John, and the space between them hangs frightened-still, like the pause before a sandstorm from another war, in another life, the first war that sent him to talk about being alive while surrounded by dead plastic plants and fake plastic smiles from people not yet scarred.

Ella scratches down something on her notepad and John can’t stop himself from stretching his neck, trying to decipher what Ella thinks of him this time. She smiles with only her mouth, and turns the pad so he can see. In her loopy cursive, it reads, “Still in denial.” John clenches his fists. She turns the pad back towards her and tilts her head, blinks slowly. John knows that patient look; it’s the expression of fellow medics waiting for general anesthesia to wear off. 

He breathes in. _“Breathing. Breathing’s boring.”_ John closes his eyes, swallows, neck muscles tensed like snapped lifelines. _Pain isn’t boring, Sherlock. Not when you’re the one living it._ John breathes out.

The damn crutch, the one that left John too slow to chase the shadow of a memory of a man, is leant against John’s chair again. Inside his closed eyelids, John has etched that quick glimpse of billowing coat and curled dark hair, gloved hand raised for a taxi. A glimpse, that’s all he has now.

John smirks self-consciously. The ache in his shoulder knows when to fall in line with John, but his leg... He should court martial his leg for betraying him, leaving him tripping over the pavement as he limped towards Sherlock’s ghost. A taxi had pulled up, forcing John to retreat. By the time John limped his way to the other side of the pavement , Sherlock’s echo had vanished from John’s sight.

John opens his eyes again. Ella sits in her comfortable chair, hands poised on the arms of her chair as she leans back. She watches John, staring at him like John might _finally_ crack open and tell her about pain. Breathing. John would dare to call this living.

But they _both know that’s not quite not true._

He inhales carefully, drawing gases over his hypersensitized olfactory nerves. There’s no scent of chlorine, just dead plastic flowers cloying the room.

“John, you know that’s not possible.” Ella’s voice is kind. If John was less generous, the proper label would be pitying. John breathes out and the disturbance in the air makes the dust motes swirl and dance in the mid-afternoon sunlight. 

_"Dust is eloquent."_

John blinks. The pattern of dancing dust breaks up into little fragments of uncaught motion.

_No, Sherlock, dust is made of small and lost specks of forgotten matter that haven’t yet fallen to the ground. Nothing eloquent about that at all._

John glances at the clock. Their time isn’t up yet. He waits. Breathes in.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments/Crying in comments/Kudos are sincerely appreciated. I want to know /why/ people like/don't like my things. I need feedback.


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